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Welcome to Agency Breakthrough, where we bring you real, gritty stories of agency operators who found the path to get past the plateau. Whether it’s hitting on a playbook for massive growth, scaling profit margins, or finding a way to have an agency and a life, we’re here to share how they achieved it; and laugh a little along the way. Presented by ZenPilot and ClickUp, and your hosts today are Jakub Grajcar and Gray MacKenzie.
All right, we're live. Kuba, how are you sir?
Doing great today. We just got finished recording
another, an episode of a different podcast and
now into another podcast, the A for Batching,
right? Here we go, Agency Breakthrough. So welcome
aboard. You're listening in a little conversation
Kuba and I are having. This is very much not
rehearsed as you can probably tell already.
Kuba, let's give the backstory maybe like what
is Agency Breakthrough? So Agency Breakthrough
is a new podcast we're starting in cooperation
with ClickUp. And me and Gray here will be
hosting. Hi, I'm Jakub, I'm Kuba Krajcer, head
of marketing at ZenPilot. And this is Gray,
co-founder at ZenPilot. Gray, say hi. That's
me. Okay, so what we're trying to do here is
to start a new podcast for agencies, because
that's never been done before. And... try and
tell the stories of the breakthroughs that agencies
have had and to help our listeners learn from
that and to kind of, okay, I've got like a whole
thing written out about this, can I just read
the official show intro? Can you do it and I'll
give you your sarcastic undertones, okay? Okay,
so, welcome to Agency Breakthrough where we
bring you real gritty stories of agency operators
who found the path to get past the plateau.
Green use or plateau? Oh yeah, thank you. And
the alliteration, have you noticed? Yeah. Ask,
get past the plateau. Love it. Yeah, I love
it. I love it because I wrote it. Whether it's
hitting on a playbook for massive growth, scaling
profit margins or finding a way to have an agency
and a life, we're here to share how they achieved
it and laugh a little along the way. I love
how we kind of signal that this is going to
be funny. Please laugh. Please, please. We beg
you. We'll make it put the loud track in. Yeah.
Presented by Zenpilot and ClickUp and your hosts
today are Jakub Graizard and Gray McKenzie
and just because I mean I put myself first and
you second, Gray. Excellent. Well, well written.
I'm super excited for this. I mean, this all
kind of stems from a conversation that Gaurav
Agarwal who leads growth at ClickUp and I had
we were together in San Diego. at the beginning
of February and just talking about, hey, here's
what we're doing in terms of marketing, here's
where you guys are going and how do we, you
know, one of, so ClickUp's got, do you know
about the Core 4 at ClickUp? The Core 4? No,
you should enlighten me about that. So they've
got these Core 4 market segments, who they,
who kind of their biggest segments of customers
are and where their focus goes. And so, the
agencies are one of the largest ones. If you
just looked at logos, number of unique companies.
Probably the largest. I actually don't know
if that's true today. Let's say that it's true.
We'll just make it up. It's only presented
by ClickUp as well. So their endorsement is
on this. I don't know if that's true. I would
assume by head count that's not accurate or
that it would not be the largest just because
most agencies are, you know, in SMB space. So
it's not the big enterprise clients where they've
had a ton of growth here. But anyways, we were
comparing notes. And we're like, hey, we should
produce some content together and we should
do, like we're trying to target the agencies
who are focused on streamlining their ops and
have a heavy interest in ClickUp as a go-to
platform from a technology perspective. And
they want more thought leadership so they pick
the wrong people but basically folks who have
an inside scoop into agencies which is the
world that we've swum in, the world, the sea
that we've swum in, the world that we've lived
in. for the last 12 years or whatever. And so
anyways, that led to that was the initial spark
and you kind of took it and carried the ball
from there. What was this experience like getting
to the point where we're actually hitting record
and we're in the first show? Well, I remember
the key point being actually coming from you.
Because, well, we got in touch with ClickUp,
right? We thought about what this is going to
be and who we want to reach. And we want to
reach kind of an agency audience here. What
we like to call agency operators. I don't know,
at some point, we should have a good piece of
content to point you to about defining this
agency operator persona, building towards that.
For me, the key moment was when we actually
is going to make this podcast different. And
that's the idea of this breakthrough that we're
going to focus on. So it was a lot of back and
forth, a lot of brainstorming between the two
of us, and then a lot of feedback about this
intro section that you just heard, which I
think is like the sixth draft of this or something.
So I thought, I'm trying to think of who might
be listening to this, and how far do we go into
definitions. But do you think, Ray, before
we talk about why this is called agency breakthrough
and why the breakthrough is, shall we define?
ClickUp, Define, ZenPilot, just you know, the
bare basics here so people aren't lost. Yeah.
Why not? So, I'll take ClickUp and you can tell.
I'll play ClickUp, you play ZenPilot. Hi. Okay.
My name is ClickUp. I'm an incredible project
management software. I've grown just with supreme
velocity over the last five plus years. This
is going like seriously. So, I got to know
Zeb. Chris Cunningham, the early team at ClickUp
way back like end of 2017, early 2018. And
this is coming out of four guys moving out to
a house in Palo Alto together and working together.
And then to go from that to a thousand people
and raising all this money and growing just
incredibly fast has been unbelievable to have
kind of a, you know, a court side seat to watch
their growth. But ClickUp is... the fastest
growing project management platform, they've
probably expanded that. I should go look what's
on their homepage right now. Sorry, my homepage,
I forgot I'm ClickUp. Still says one after a
bit small, all your work in place. So, there's
all these different names that everyone's coming
up with, you know, is it work management, is
it productivity software, is it project management?
We don't want to just get bundled down out
of the project management space. And so, ClickUp's
built out this incredible product obviously
that's got tooling around all the common project
management stuff. tasks and docs and dashboards
but then around kind of the whiteboards and
that's been a huge area of investment. We'll
talk about and I think the cool thing about
us getting to this from the outside, even though
we're producing this with ClickUp is we can
kind of be, you know, hey, critical of hey,
here's the parts that still need to be improved
and need the most attention inside ClickUp
and here's the stuff that we're most excited
about on the platform. We're kind of able to
call out your school things that other tools
have done so we'll talk about some of those
later on. But that's That's ClickUp in a nutshell.
What is ZenPilot? OK, so I mean, first of all,
to put you all at ease, the podcast here is
not going to be about ClickUp. Just we're working
hand in hand to produce it. And I'm happy to
share my own story of how it happened upon
ClickUp maybe later on or in a different episode.
What is ZenPilot? Hello, I am ZenPilot. And
I saw and previously I wanted to create my own
project management software called DoInbound.
And then. I realized that what agencies have
a problem with primarily is not the tool itself,
but the process and the people that are using
the tool. So in order to kind of make that
work, I, ZenPilot, decided on the best project
management tool for agencies and at the time
decided that is ClickUp and just decided to
be the best team when it comes to implementing
ClickUp for agencies and helping them get the
most out of this tool and make it do things
that you wouldn't have thought. possible with
ClickUp. Why thank you. And I have helped over
2,700 agencies and counting to just streamline
their operations in ClickUp and get more visibility,
more productivity, more done faster, and all
that good stuff. How did I do? That's amazing.
First of all, I love that you take advantage
of me so well. And
great job. Or we're gonna go. Okay, we're dropping
the personas. This is getting too confusing.
That's right. All right, Kuba. Okay. Why agency
breakthrough? Wow, you're asking me? Well,
okay. So, here's how I am interpreting it. And
kind of from what you imparted on me from this
idea, which I want to point to you as the person
that first said the words agency breakthrough,
you know, all responsibility rests on you here.
Why agency breakthrough? Because sometimes
what you need is that breakthrough moment that
changes everything. The moment when you change
one thing and it changes everything is the way
I'm trying to phrase it consistently and failing.
So what I mean here is the moment when you find
the lever that you can pull that just gives
you outsized results or just the one framework
or the one mindset or whatever change, you
know, sometimes it might be higher. Sometimes
it might be kind of refocused to saying, going
broader, going narrower. The thing that you
do that just changes your agency for the better,
for good, and in a huge way. We want to tell
those stories to inspire you, dear listeners,
to find your own breakthrough moment and your
breakthrough moment is not going to be the
same as our guests probably. It's not about,
oh, they focus on PPC, so we should focus on
PPC or whichever, you know. But just to share
kind of the thinking behind what made this
breakthrough possible so that you can have this
thinking too. And you can also be on the lookout
for... the levers that you can pull and you
know, what you can take advantage of in your
unique situation to have your breakthrough as
well. So, we're telling these stories so you
can have your breakthrough. Does that sound
about accurate? That's right. So, one of my
breakthrough moments personally is our family
started doing this thing where we do special
time is what we call it and it's one-on-one
time, my wife or I, one of us will take one
of the four kids and we'll go on a quick date.
and every Thursday morning. So, we rotate through,
we have four kids. So, every eight weeks each
kid gets to go with my wife and with me one
time. So, my daughter Laurel and I went to the
library because she is an avid reader. She's
eight years old and we were sitting in the library.
She was reading a series of books. She was
on the third and the fourth books and I was
doodling on my sketch pad and I wrote down
agency breakthrough and that's where The idea
kind of started as hey, there's all these agency
podcasts. If you want to know a podcast, if
you want to listen to a podcast about agency
growth or how to market or how to hire or how
to do ops or whatever else or you want to hear
yet another the you know, a thousandth agency
owner interview just kind of talking about
the general story and I went to college and
then I accidentally started an agency and then
this happened and that happened and now here
I am 20 years later and I've got a 50 person
team. That stuff's all out there. There's plenty
of that. What I want here is I want kind of
the sweetened condensed version of hey, here's
a meaty problem that I was stuck on and we
were bumping our heads and we were scraping
our elbows against them while trying to solve
this and eventually we found something that
worked really well and I want you to be able
to take that as motivation and inspiration and
I also want it to be practical application
of how do I learn from that and some of these
are going to be extremely applicable to your
situation. You're gonna say, yes, I should do
what Dean and Ryan Atworth did or I should
do what Marcus at Impact did or I should do
what Michael and Nicole at Bojo Media Labs
did or whatever those examples are, you know,
I can go do that thing. And then part of this
is just, hey, it's just fun to hear other people's
stories. The good is exciting. The bad is what
gives it all the context and it's the fun and
the ability to kind of, hey, we're all wallowing
through this together and in it together. So,
I'm super excited to be hosting this with you,
Kuba, and running it together. Can we talk about
the three pieces, like three core pieces of
the show structure real quickly? Yeah, yeah.
You're kind of leading to that, right? So,
the breakthrough kind of the storytelling segment,
let's say that's gonna be the middle of it
and- for you to be able to contextualize the
story, the first segment is gonna be, I mean,
we're experimenting with various approaches
here. Maybe we'll talk a little bit first between
the two of us before we bring the guest on.
But once the guest is on, we'll first ask about
kind of the context, you know, what is the scale
of the agency? What are the numbers that they're
willing to share just so you understand whether
you're listening to an agency of 50 or 500
or over many million in revenue so you can kind
of contextualize this in your head. So that's
act one. what is the scale of this agency and
kind of numbers based and just, you know, giving
an idea of the scale. Act two, what Gray just
discussed, the breakthrough story and you know,
just in a simple chronological way. What was
like before? What was the breakthrough? What
is life now, you know, after the breakthrough?
And also, trying to help you replicate this
or replicate the thinking that led to it, how
might somebody else have this breakthrough
as well and what are the pitfalls kind of along
the way? things had happened a different way,
this breakthrough never would have happened.
So, that's kind of the whole second segment.
And I find it funny that we're discussing this
today because also, I mean, one of the parts
of our thinking behind this show is that we
want to iterate an experiment. So, I wonder
if we're going to be kind of laughing at this
you know, in a few months time that we thought
the show was going to be like this but totally
not. But still, the concept is first context,
second breakthrough, third what? We're calling
the crisp cornucopia. So just a lot of rapid
fire recommendations, you know, I mean, you
must have always experienced this and we want
to help you as well to find new tools, new sources,
new people to follow because everybody has,
you know, that secret tool or secret weapon
that, you know, they never shared about but
actually, you know, there's this agency that
we use for 70% of our content, you know, and
they never shared about it. So we want to uncover
that as well to help you find the right. people
to work with, the right tools to work with and
that's gonna be kind of the last part of the
show. At the end, maybe some shout outs, maybe
some thoughts about who could be the next guest
and you know, interview all of the agencies
that way. Right. I think our job is really
to ask the tough questions that people want
to know like those second and third and fourth
order questions, you know, really where the
magic comes from. Okay, it's great that you
wrote a book. and all of a sudden this stuff
pops up. Like how accessible is that to the...
Basically, all the reasons as we're like, and
this will be easy for me because I'm in that
situation, hey, I'm running and owning a professional
services firm that's this kind of in the typical
size and has aggressive growth goals. But what
are all the reasons that we instantly think
this couldn't work for me? Or there's something
special about you or your situation or why
you're just so lucky? and kind of throw that
at guests and figure out okay, like you know,
how can we help people really see that as something
that is practical for them and it's not it
won't be practical for everyone but dig into
that. Yeah. I would be happy if you know, we
asked enough questions where our guests to some
of them would honestly reply that part was
just luck you know, and that's why you can't
replicate every breakthrough exactly you know.
this I prepared for, you know, that other obstacle
I kind of surmounted but this other thing if
it had happened, the breakthrough wouldn't have
happened and I got lucky. I think, you know,
we have to be honest about these stories too.
That's a great framework because I just think
of a couple example breakthroughs. We'll probably
have I mentioned Worth earlier, Worth e-commerce.
We'll probably have Dean Dutro and Dean and
Ryan will grab one of them at some point and
bring them on the podcast. built an email marketing
agency together, email marketing is no longer
the cool way to say it, now you gotta call it
retention marketing agency. So, email and SMS
and then whatever else that expands to. The
names all change to this stuff about every
18 months or so. So, you gotta make sure that
you're on the cutting edge of that. But their
big breakthrough was building the growth side.
of the business. So, originally, a ton of the
work came from Upwork and they built a really
cool mechanism for taking Upwork clients. I've
seen very few agencies do this but take Upwork
clients through a small, very clearly scoped
project and then convert them into a monthly
retainer. And typically, Upwork fails because
you've got extremely budget, people are there
to find a discount from 90% of Upwork customers
and it's really hard to turn them from being
for the I'm here competing on cost to okay,
now I'm... interested in quality and I want
to work with you long term at a really profitable
rate for an agency. But they had a model for
doing that, layered in outbound and wound up
exiting and selling their agency just a couple
years later at over a 7x multiple on EBITDA
which is unusual as well for kind of the early
stage agencies. I love the beginning of their
breakthrough because the piece that is harder
to replicate is they were one of the first
ones to really gain traction and grow pretty
big and so their exit was at a point where
the market was heating up and I'd be curious
to hear, you know, hey, if someone else builds
the exact same looking business today, do they
get some kind of multiple on an exit and an
exit too that in their case they sold the smart
bud but does someone else, are those opportunities
the same? Are they better? Are they not? I don't
know. Yeah, when you boil it down, all of these
moves that you're making, they're an investment
and to get a return on an investment, you have
to time the market correctly, right? So, I do
wonder what the guests are gonna say about
that as well. Which, so we've already got kind
of the first batch and we'll probably batch
release the first set of episodes. Got our first
handful of guests booked. Who are you most
excited about? Are the most excited about Marcus?
Share it then. I'm gonna clip this and send
this to everyone else by the way who don't know.
Sorry, Gustav, can you say it again? I am the
most excited about Marcus Sheridan of They Ask
You Answer fame and from Impact. I don't know
what to say here. I mean, Marcus's book influenced
me when I was a young marketer. I mean, still
am by a lot of metrics, right? But you know,
at the beginning of my marketing journey, I
followed that book like gospel and like having
an opportunity to interview him on the show
is just such a treat. I love it how you didn't
even give me a chance to be cool with Marcus
but you already introduced me via email as the
resident fanboy but it's like I would have
gone that route anyway. I couldn't sleep when
I got the email where he said yes so, yes.
So we're interviewing Marcus and that's the
person that I'm definitely most excited about
and he's like also like a consummate public
speaker, you know. I'm so passionate about
public speaking. I did Toastmasters for a time
and I just love to get on stage so just having
a chance to interact with somebody who is like...
so much further on this path and doing keynotes
and all these workshops, everything. Just love
everything about that and I can't wait to record
that. Adam I had lunch two weeks ago, this rarely
happens to me because we're all remote and
we serve agencies all over the world. But I
had lunch with a client two weeks ago and so,
we're talking about kind of the whole business.
We spent some time on ops and you know, what
we're doing on top of ClickUp which is super
exciting for them. And then we were talking
about marketing and how they were growing and
it's mostly referral based but we're really
leaning into content marketing and I specifically
really like this book called They Ask You To
Answer by this guy named Marcus and I was like,
oh, tell me more. And so, I didn't want to,
you know, you just kill the conversation if
you're like, you mean my friend Marcus? And
it was so cool to hear that in the wild, like
here's someone else, we've never talked about
this stuff before, I've never made a recommendation.
and is reading that. So, I'm super excited
to have Marcus and dig into his breakthrough
moment as well. Maybe what we could do is we
could just spend a couple minutes like one of
the things that I like throwing at people,
you said Chris Cornucopia and I was laughing
but it's like, what are some of the recommendations
that folks have? Maybe we could dig into some
tool recommendations. Are you up for that?
Yeah, definitely. I've got some stuff listed.
Mine are not necessarily tools. I've got a
course slash book slash podcast and a book slash
course. But yes, let's talk tools and other
recommendations stuff you can take away from
this. I'm gonna get yours first. But so, I
think tool recommendations, not that unusual
but doesn't happen on a ton of shows. But something,
you know, Tim Ferriss, I think I'll popularize
this, book recommendations happens probably
even more commonly. Service provider recommendations
is one thing that I want to ask people about.
Hey, we're all working in agencies, who do you
like for whatever, accounting? Who do you like
for? project management consulting, what do
you like for sales consulting? Hiring HR, you
know, one of the best professional services
providers who you worked with. What is, so
what do you have to recommend today? Okay, awesome.
So the first thing that I have to recommend
is building a second brain. I recently did a
launch and learn about this at ZenPilot and
it's a few things.
the person that kind of came up with the concept
and popularized it recently turned it into
a book before it was a book. I'm sorry, Tiago,
but I feel like the best way to get on this
is the free podcast that's still out there called
Building a Second Brain. Just I think it's
around 10 like bite-sized episodes about the
various concepts. But the concept in general
is it's a comprehensive note-taking system but...
What I like about it is that it leaves a lot
of flexibility and room and a lot of ways you
can adapt it to your own needs. So it was a
minor breakthrough for me when I started my
second brain and I started just collecting
all of the resources and thoughts and ideas
and sources that I have for various areas of
what's in my first brain starting to put that
in my second brain. So in a nutshell, the way
it's organized is you've got... and you can
adapt it to your own needs, right? But it's
about capturing the stuff that you're seeing
online or hearing in a podcast or you know,
you're reading through a blog and something
stands out to you, put that in your second
brain. Map it to an area, do it for three months,
six months, a year, all of a sudden when you're
supposed to do a talk about like marketing,
for example, or leadership, you've got this
whole catalog of like pre-screened content or
just your own original thoughts that you can
put together a presentation about whatever area
is near and dear to you. in minutes instead
of hours. And you know, in a meta kind of way,
when I was supposed to do the workshop about
the second brain idea, I used my notes from
my second brain to put that together. So, that's
my first recommendation not to go too deep into
it, but you should look it up and I recommend
you start with the podcast, Building a Second
Brain. Second recommendation, I love to find
ways to kind of recontextualize what I'm doing
day to day to find more motivation, to energize
myself. book that's I don't think super popular
because I could talk about like Atomic Habits
or you know or maybe Tony Robbins stuff. I could
but here's one that maybe you haven't heard
about. It's called The Alter Ego Effect by Todd
Herman. Now, I am super into like comic books,
Marvel, superhero stuff and I have a very active
imagination. That's one of the first things
that the teacher said when I was at school like
he's... cool but sometimes he just gets lost
in his own imagination and we can't snap him
out of it. Anyway, the alter ego effect, the
concept is that for various contexts in your
life, so one context might be work, another
might be sports, another might be family, another
might be musicianship for example, I play bass
so for me that tracks. For each of those, you
come up with like a full persona that you embody
when you're in that activity. So, when you're
in family mode... you imagine yourself as one
kind of character. So, like for one character
that I'm kind of following when I need to be
kind of tender and caring as I try to be like
Keanu Reeves for example, you know. It can
be somebody real, it can be somebody fictional,
it can be a character of your own invention
but just this and there's research to back this
up actually when you embody this different
persona, you start acting differently, you start
having different thoughts and ultimately that
leads to different actions and different. outcomes.
So, the alter ego effect, it's a simple enough
concept but I do recommend going through the
book because it goes into much more detail
of how to activate the persona, what kind of
enemies the persona is that your alter ego
is facing. It's just hugely inspirational and
it really gives you this huge boost when you
need it the most to activate your alter ego.
So, those are my two. I love that. I've never
heard of that before but I wonder if I saw a
thread on Twitter here at some point. where
someone had a bunch of different alarms set
on their phone and each of the names of the
alarms was that kind of the personality. Does
that come from the book or is that someone's
spinoff of the idea? I suspect that- I'm going
to work out at 6am so my alarm at 5.45 says
rad dad bod time or whatever identity I want
to go adopt. Yeah. The one I saw was like 4.45
was like beast mode and then I think around
eight or nine when work starts is like full
focus and then the after work it was like best
dad ever. Yep. You know? So and yes, these
are the kind of you know, personalities that
the personas that we need to kind of embody.
Is that related to the book? I don't know. I've
seen more than one Twitter thread that seemed
very heavily inspired by the alter ego effect
but not mentioning, you know, to the point
that it kind of quoted the same research. Like
I was I even responded to one of those like,
hey, you seem to be like... referring to something
but not naming it by name. Not cool. But anyway,
yes, like people catch on to this and then they
share about it as well. I have shared about
this on my own LinkedIn as well and on TikTok.
I used to do TikTok for a spell. So, I'm going
to bring that back. I need to find this. That's
awesome. Well, I have three all minor tools.
I'll keep these pretty quick. First one is reflect,
reflect.app. It is basically where my second
brain winds up. The stuff that's not in, so
click up all the team. All the work, all the
tasks, even my personal tasks, birthday reminders,
that kind of stuff is inside. ClickUp, Reflect
is all my notes. It's got awesome bi-directional
linking and is really easily searchable and
super low friction to use. A tool that I love
using in conjunction with it is called Super
Whisper and this is one have you heard of this?
No, I haven't. Super early on, I don't even
know if this is a business versus just like
someone's toying around to build it for themselves
and it's out there. Superwhisper.com. It's probably
Mac only, I don't know. I think it is actually.
I had to download it and pull it in. I wish
I could screen share right now. So, in my menu
bar, I have this little triangle and when I
press the keyboard shortcut or I just tap on
it, all it does is there's a little green dot
that's or sorry, red dot that turns on and
it's recording. And then I press it again, I
have my keyboard shortcut and it stops it.
and it just copies whatever you said to the
clipboard as text. But it is crazy fast and
so it's not instant. I was gonna say instant
but it's not truly instant. It's like, I don't
know, have a second or a second behind depending
on how much you record. But the transcription
is like 100%. It's perfect transcription of
whatever you're doing. I haven't dictated anything
super like I haven't taken you know, a five
paragraph thing and dictated that out yet to
see how to slice it up and punctuate it and
whatever. But the text itself has been spot
on every single time for me. So, that's super
helpful. I just want to record something and
I want to paste it in, do whatever. A Slack
message, click up into email, into wherever
else. Superwhisper.com is what I use for that.
So, question about that. So, does it trans-
it transcribes word for word? It doesn't do
like what AI sometimes does like summarize
or you know, tamper with it? That's all it does
right now is just literally word for word transcription.
For a painting. I've used that with chat GPT
a good amount. Say my prompt out loud and then
just command C, command V in the chat GPT, there
we go. My last one and you'll notice the theme
here around productivity but text expander.
Do you use a text expander tool and did you
use one prior to ZenPilot? I haven't prior to
ZenPilot and actually just this week I started
using it for the first time. Also related to
chat GPT, I have this whole, this is a nice
town I hope for the listeners. I have this prompt
save that has just a lot of context about ZenPilot
because I mean go figure I end up using chat
GPT for ZenPilot at all, a lot, right? So I
don't want to have to explain kind of the target
audience, the service lines, the size of the
company, etc. each time. So now I have this
prepared kind of this big chunk of text that's
like here's what ZenPilot is again. I have saved
that as just, you know, zp prompt template
or something and via text expander just paste
itself right in there. So, yes, I started using
it recently but that's just the first use case
I found for it. You should talk about how it's
used at zempilot because it's like much more
comprehensive. So, we use it for a ton of stuff.
I started with text expanders just like if I
type QEM, in fact, I was at out at click up
HQ in February and I'm typing in someone else's
computer and I'm putting in my email address.
for them and I typed QEM, they left it and they
were like, wait, what's your email at? I was
like, what do you mean at? Like my handle? Are
you talking about Twitter or something? And
they were like, no, what's your QEM at what?
I was like, no, it's not QEM, it's GrazeEmpower.com.
Oh, I typed QEM because that's my email, like
that automatically expands GrazeEmpower.com.
Q phone. That's power of habit.
So, there's all the really, really basic use
cases like that. Hey, I just want to type three
keys and have it expand. And the powerful thing
is about this, like when you have company-wide
adoption of this, if you change anything about
your company and everybody's using the short,
you know, form for it, then you don't have to
do so much work communicating because people
are going to be using the same shortcut and
just getting different output. Like let's say
the official company address changed, you know.
You could bury that in a wiki. or just update
the text expander prompt and people are gonna
see that the output is different. Like instantly,
everybody gets updated on that, you know? And
nobody wants to spend time digging through
a Wiki to find the official company address.
So it's faster and it's more consistent and
that's really a rare find. Out of office forms,
intake forms, like whatever else, URLs, all
of that stuff. Well, then you take it to the
next level. And you can text expander is one
of the most powerful, it might be the most powerful
text expander, I don't know. And like I use
Raycast, we can talk about a bunch of different
tools that probably have some of this functionality
built in. But what's cool is you can have these
little models pop up that pre kind of have
spaces for hey, I need an input here. You can
also have any characters on your keyboard.
So for example, there's a form that I have to
fill out a couple of times every week and I
type four things, four characters. and it goes
through and so it fills out the first field,
all these fields are sequential in order, then
it hits tab on my keyboard, automatically goes
to the second one, fills that in, hits tab,
hit tab, and then enter. At the end, I actually
have a prompt where I have to enter in something
and then I have to hit tab and then it tabs
through the rest and hits enter and submits
it for me. So it's just a kind of a really
simple way to automate some of life. You're
exactly right, it does help keep kind of brand
solidarity or consistency across the team. but
mostly a productivity thing. Yeah. So, any
kind of text that you find yourself grabbing
from a doc, you know, in another window on
another screen, you could just be using Text
Expander for it. What you're mentioning here,
it really is reminding me to use Text Expander
more because once you set it up and get that
habit, it just keeps paying off in terms of
seconds and minutes saved. What do you, if
anyone else is listening, I'm sorry, is using
Text Expander, is listening, send us an email
to breakthrough at Zenpilot.com and let us know
what do you use as your starting key? Like
for me, I use Q a lot or I use a period but
primarily Q because I'm never gonna type QEM
for a word or anywhere else. So, pick whatever
you want your starting thing to be and then
that allows you to keep your, what your inputs
can be extremely short which is super nice.
Have you seen it? Go to typingmind.com.
Have you ever heard of this? I can't. I've never
shared this with you before. Better UI for
chat GPT. I'm sold. I don't need to know anything
else. So, you can uh, there's a paid version.
You can download this. You can use your chat
GPT API key. You can just use the web version
as well. But so this guy Tony who is awesome,
he has built a bunch of these different kind
of micro tools. And this one is getting a ton
of his attention right now. He's done a really
good job with this. But one of the cool, he's
got a bunch of cool features kind of on top
of it. Let me see, in March he hit, let's see,
he released the MVP of this thing on March
6th. He hit 10k in revenue on March 10th. I'm
trying to see if I've got, I don't have any
inside scoop here on what his revenue is right
now. But anyways. TypingMind allows you to
have all these, there's a whole bunch of custom
prompts built into it. So you just press that
and your prompt is already there. You can save
your own as well. So if you weren't using TextExpander,
something like TypingMind could also work for
quickly plugging in your prompts. And then
yeah, you can dial in the temperature and all
the other kind of customizations on top of
it that you can do, which is pretty cool. That's
great. I need to have a closer look at this
off the call, but always nice to get a tool
recommendation like that. All right, we could
do a million tool recommendations. Let's close
this thing out. I think format wise with where
we go, I'm super excited to have folks like
download all the rest of them that are available.
Go listen to, we're gonna release here the first
five of them all together. So, go listen to
those. Let us know. Email us breakthrough at
zempile.com. How we can change the format.
What works well for you? What do you love? the
recommendations, they're really tactical like,
oh, I can go type this in, I can buy this book
on Amazon, I can go download this app. What
questions do you want us to push harder on in
the Breakthrough itself? We'll love the toy
around with some of those things. Kuba, what
else do we have here as we wrap up? Yeah, definitely
send us thoughts on breakthrough at zempilot.com.
It's almost as if we like they ask you answer
as a concept ourselves and we want to serve
you, our audience here, right? So... Definitely
share your thoughts and we'll keep that in mind
as we're recording these. Even the format itself
right now is, you know, we have an idea but
we'll see how it develops over time. So if
you have thoughts about, you know, maybe you
could do a segment on this, segment on that,
we're open to that and let's discuss. Other
things, I think it would be useful to remind
the audience just who this is brought by just
so, you know, to contextualize. So again, this...
podcast, Agency Breakthrough is a cooperation
between ZenPilot and ClickUp. At ZenPilot,
we help agencies streamline operations and we
do that by helping them implement ClickUp,
but also improve their processes, finally get
those SOPs and templates in order, and to train
the team. So there's like a cadence of daily,
weekly, monthly checks to make sure that everything
is in the system and tagged right in the system.
We help with all of that and more for huge
productivity and profit gains. And great, two
words about ClickUp. Yeah, well, I am ClickUp
just to remind you all. I am- Oh yes, yeah.
Yeah. The go-to and fastest growing project
management tool for agencies. If you're listening
and you're not already using ClickUp, do yourself
a favor and go to ClickUp.com and check me out.
I was gonna say check them out but check me
out obviously or go to ZenPilot.com and look
for the ClickUp for Agencies guide. We've got
this awesome 47 page. Totally free guide. There's
a long 4,000 word blog post that I originally
wrote a couple years ago that's been updated
a number of times since then. A million resources
that we're putting out to help you for folks
who, whether they want to use our services
or they just want to use all the free stuff,
there's not a ton of secrets. There's some
really cool stuff behind the scenes, especially
around reporting that we want to do, but there's
really, a lot of this is like, hey, you just
got to get the basics in place. The coolest,
I mean, the thing to understand about a tool
like ClickUp... You're coming from a trailer
or a base camp or on a sauna or something very
simple, you can get overwhelmed by how powerful
ClickUp is. Yeah. And you've got all these,
it's the curse of freedom is really what it
is. Like, oh, I'm free to set it up this way,
I'm free to set it up that way and that is
exactly what we love about it is, hey, if you're
a design team or a dev team and you see your
board view and we're trying to move stuff through
and statuses, that's great. And if you're a
project manager, you're going to be like, oh,
I'm going to move this thing or you're super
detailed or even like I am and you want a long
list or a table view, you've got that and if
you're a creative and you want a whiteboard
view but you want to all be using the same
core data, we're still working with tasks and
they could all be in the same place, that freedom
is amazing and people who are new to the platform
figuring out how to use the hierarchy best
and how to use views and dashboards best, those
are the three and custom fields, those are
like the four core key features that you kind
of need to wrap your head around and so we're
just trying to short-cut that learning for people
and help. Explain hey, here's why and here's
how so then pilot.com. Yeah, look in the header
I just don't have this distinct feeling I have
this distinct feeling great that you're like
extremely excited about click up Maybe even
enough to start a company all around it without
me for it to say I might be a step too far.
All right That's uh, that's absolutely true.
I'm uh, I Like to think that I'm a fair fanboy
that I am 100% rooting for for ClickUp and the
whole team and at the same time, our job and
who we get paid by is our clients. And so, our
job, you can understand since the beginning,
what's the best tool for most agencies most
of the time, that's where we're gonna go focus.
And so, that led to ClickUp. All right, anything
else for you? Let's wrap this up. Follow ZenPilot,
follow ClickUp, follow me, follow Gray and-
Those are the CTAs for today. We're really
excited that you either, you know, listened
to the very first episode of Agency Breakthrough
or you went back to listen to the first episode
that puts you in a very exclusive club. So
welcome and we hope you're going to enjoy the
ride as much as we're enjoying it here. We'll
see you in the next one, probably with our first
guests or, you know, whichever else is next
up in your favorite podcast platform. This has
been a blast, Gray. Thank you for the time.
Perfect. Thanks, Kuba.